Xbox Games Showcase 2020: Good/Bad/Ugly
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/25/20 at 08:41 PM CT
Lagging behind both Sony, PC Gamer Magazine, and Ubisoft with their E3 substitute presentation, Microsoft followed their less-than-impressive Xbox SeX reveal earlier this year with a new Games Showcase this past week. Clocking in at a reasonable runtime of “about an hour,” the games showcase gave MS the opportunity to show off all the big projects the company’s numerous development studios have been working on since the House of Gates acquired them over the course of the last few years. What has Microsoft’s investment in first-party studios produced? Let’s look at the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Good
Microsoft bragged that a whopping NINE out of the enormous FIFTEEN studios the Microsoft Games Division now owns have new projects ready to go… unfortunately, most of those projects went into the other categories in this breakdown, and most of the stuff shown probably won’t even see the light of day until late into 2021.
Regardless, I’m personally excited to see …
Ubisoft “Forward” Event is One “Backward” Step for Ubisoft Among Many
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/18/20 at 04:13 PM CT
Last weekend, Ubisoft, French purveyor of “AAA” swill and Triumvirate of Evil member (alongside Electronic Arts and Activision-Blizzard) hosted its own substitute E3 presentation. Dubbed “Ubisoft Forward,” the hour-and-a-half live video presentation, like so many other dumb, hype-generating affairs (like the Super Bowl), had extra pre-show and post-show events, dragging the display of advertising might out for far longer than anyone (besides Ubisoft) would have wanted.
Of course, prior to last Sunday, when Ubisoft Forward streamed live all afternoon, Ubisoft had already started promoting the affair, promising bribes rewards for Uplay members who watched, including the giveaway of one of their $60 “AAA” games, “Watch_Dogs 2.” While I personally have no interest in playing “Watch_Dogs 2,” I AM interested in claiming free games and making gaming corporations take the financial hit, so against my better judgment (and while struggling to write an article while …
Vaguely Related Review: The New “DuckTales”
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/12/20 at 04:19 PM CT
Back in 1987, Disney Television Studios Buena Vista produced a cultural touchstone for a generation. The original “DuckTales” cartoon, which ran from 1987-1990 over the course of four seasons and a feature-length film, was originally based on the “Uncle Scrooge” Disney comic books written and drawn by the legendary Carl Barks.
Thanks to a partnership between Disney and Capcom during that era, “DuckTales” also found itself cemented into the hearts and minds of a generation of gamers thanks to a fairly good NES adaptation of the show into a 2D Platformer. Indeed, Capcom was renowned for producing high-quality licensed videogames (an oxymoron, for sure) based on Disney IPs well into the ‘90s.
Thanks to the fact that ‘80s kids are now reaching their mid-life crises, everything old is new again, as media peddlers try to help the first wave of Millennials (and the last wave of Gen-X) recapture the nostalgia of their lost youth… for a nominal fee, of course. Thus, in …
New Gen = New Price Hike
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/05/20 at 04:09 PM CT
This past week, rumbles from within the bowels of the Games Industry began to murmur of a $10 price hike that at least some big “AAA” publishers will start applying to their console (and probably PC multi-platform) game releases. This increase will take the retail cost of a new game from the exorbitant $60 it has been since roughly 2006 to an egregious $70 for the “basic” game experience.
Those of us with some common sense know that games have, in fact, NOT been “priced at $60 forever, and thus due for an increase due to inflation,” as the apologists like to argue. No, new “AAA” videogames have been roughly $100 new for quite some time, thanks to the fact that the $60 “basic” experience pretty much requires an extra payment of $40 for the season pass in order to have the “complete” experience. There’s no word yet about whether publishers plan to hike their season pass prices too, but the smart bet is that they will.
“AAA” publishers, who make up …
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